Two commercials on TV are currently troubling me. Firstly, it’s not the content but the timing of one that cropped up during the E! News Special, The Life & Death of Anna Nicole. Seems the execs over at TrimSpa were not shy about milking the money from the Anna Nicole deal, as there was a TrimSpa ad during every single break. Picture the scene: Coming up, the truth behind Anna’s lethal cocktail of pills. Beat. TrimSpa! Be all you ever envied! I was struck by the advertisers’ cynicism, and wondered if the TrimSpa folks ever saw this headline. Maybe it was their inspiration.
The second commercial troubling me is for Alltel, where the rival network guys bundle out of a van and try to dissuade the girl on the street from leaving them. They threaten her with the kidnap of Fluffy, a pug, which as it turns out belongs to a burly guy on the street nailing up a LOST DOG poster of Fluffy. However – and it doesn’t take a pug-owner to spot this – the picture of the pug on the poster is not the pug that has been kidnapped! So who does the mystery pug belong to? Will burly guy abandon it when he realizes it’s not Fluffy? And to top it all, Fluffy is still missing. The mental anguish alone is enough to make me open a Verizon account instead.
– Steven Corfe
